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News About Tech, Money and InnovationSun, 02 Aug 2015 19:00:51 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Copyright 2015, VentureBeatBuzzFeed launches a curated news app on iOShttp://venturebeat.com/2015/06/18/buzzfeed-launches-its-curated-news-app-on-ios-and-android/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/18/buzzfeed-launches-its-curated-news-app-on-ios-and-android/#commentsThu, 18 Jun 2015 11:00:29 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1753551What's most compelling about the app is not the curation, but the content that comes from having a dedicated editorial staff working on the news app.
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BuzzFeed is launching a mobile news app that focuses on supplying quick, digestible bits of information to contextualize the top stories of the hour.

The BuzzFeed News app will be rolling out to iOS devices this morning. The company plans to launch an Android version this fall.

Stirrings of a news app first appeared last year, when the company started hiring journalists to work on a mobile app.

The new app features a brief list of the top stories from the hour along with snippets of news pulled from BuzzFeed and other sources around the Web. What’s most compelling about the app, though, is not the curation, but the added content that comes from having a dedicated editorial staff working on the news app. Each story features an image along with a short paragraph explaining the news. Beneath some stories are extras that help bring context to news bites, including graphs, bullet-point lists titled “what we know so far,” and other background information such as relevant tweets. In some cases, the news app will list multiple stories concerning a single topic. For instance, coverage of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP leader in Spokane, Washington who recently stepped down from her post, garnered three separate stories.

The team said it learned a lot about how people interact with news from its News newsletter, which comes out five times a week. Two of the most important lessons, they say, came from learning to never rely on the reader to take the extra step to interact with a piece of content — and to be OK with letting go of the traditional news format.

“One element of this is weaning yourself off this idea that your article is going to be interacted with as it was when it was originally published on Buzzfeed.com,” said Stacy-Marie Ishmael, editor of the BuzzFeed News app. This understanding allowed the team to develop an app that doesn’t require the user to click through to stories. Instead, users can get the news they’re looking for simply by interacting with BuzzFeed’s various lists and timelines.

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It’s this breaking down of the news that could make the BuzzFeed News app very sticky. For now, BuzzFeed only integrates tweets, Vines, and GIFs into its News app, but it’s planning on incorporating Instagram photos, YouTube videos, and audio from SoundCloud.

Many in the news media have been trying to break the code for high engagement on news apps. The New York Times played its hand with a paid app called NYT Now. Despite accolades, the app didn’t see the level of engagement that the Times had hoped for, and it subsequently took the price tag off.

BuzzFeed has built a reputation for giving people what they want. Already the company has two apps, including Cute or Not, a Tinder-like experience for showcasing household pets, and a native app that features content from the BuzzFeed website. But its News app may be its best mobile product yet and, if it proves popular with its users, could serve as a template for other news apps going forward.

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]]>0BuzzFeed launches a curated news app on iOSTED takes over Facebook Paper’s ‘Ideas’ section with exclusive contenthttp://venturebeat.com/2014/03/17/facebook-paper-ted-partnership/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/17/facebook-paper-ted-partnership/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2014 19:13:52 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1152436Facebook’s standalone news feed app Facebook Paper is devoting an entire category of content to the TED 2014 conference in Vancouver starting today. The move is interesting because it marks the first time Facebook has worked with an outside content partner on the relatively new Facebook Paper platform. If successful, I’d assume Facebook could make similar […]
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The move is interesting because it marks the first time Facebook has worked with an outside content partner on the relatively new Facebook Paper platform. If successful, I’d assume Facebook could make similar partnerships in the future. It could also become a lucrative source of revenue for Facebook Paper should the social network decide to go the content marketing route as well.

Facebook describes the “Ideas” section as a category that’s devoted to a single important topic. Facebook Paper has previously used the Ideas section to cover topics related to International Women’s Day, the U.S. president’s State of the Union address, and the South by Southwest entertainment/tech conference.

“TED is a natural fit for this experiment, as they care deeply about design, innovation and high-quality content,” Facebook said in a statement.

As for the partnership, exclusive TED content (articles, photos, presentations) will take over the “Ideas” section of the app and run from today through Friday.

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]]>0TED takes over Facebook Paper’s ‘Ideas’ section with exclusive contentGoogle Glass gets the first news app for the ‘connected generation’http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/oogle-glass-gets-the-first-news-app-for-the-connected-generation/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/oogle-glass-gets-the-first-news-app-for-the-connected-generation/#commentsWed, 15 May 2013 17:31:00 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=738048Google Glass owners now have a news aggregation app. Straight from Glass, they can flag content for later, "like" and "dislike," or listen to an entire article.
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But that hasn’t stopped developers from responding to Google’s request to build applications for Glass. Owners of the device now have a nifty news aggregation app dubbed “Thirst Droplet,” released today by Thirst Labs.

Thirst believes the investment in Glass was worthwhile and will help it reach “Generation C” (the “C” stands for “connected.”) Either way, it reportedly only spent around three days developing features for the app.

Thirst has already unveiled its Android and iPhone apps for personalizing and curating the news. Follow topics on a mobile device and the web, and Glass will send a push notification when it’s trending on social media. Hundreds of thousands of topics — such as “Oprah Winfrey,” “49ers,” or “Google” — are currently available for you to follow.

The Glass app takes the news experience step further, giving you the opportunity to listen to an entire article. You can also flag an article for future reading and email it to yourself straight from Glass. You can also “like” or “dislike” a story.

Thirst has differentiated itself from other news readers with its language processing tools. Rather than asking readers to discover news, the it automatically finds and presents the most relevant content in what Thirst says is an engaging way. The company tracks millions of data sources — blogs, social media, and so on — to determine whether news is trending.

Don’t miss the explanatory video below to see how the app works.

Above: The Thirst news app for iPad

“Under the hood, you don’t read the same feeds as Google Reader. We find the topics relevant to you,” CEO Anuj Verma said in a recent interview with VentureBeat (pictured above), hitting on how Thirst differs from competing news apps like Flipboard and Pulse. “You don’t really have to hunt for the content.”

Similarly to news aggregation app Pulse, which LinkedIn recently acquired, Thirst Labs was formed by college friends. The founders are a pair of University of Berkeley, California grads who share a passion for UI, UX, and developing algorithms.

]]>0Google Glass gets the first news app for the ‘connected generation’Pulse News’ iOS & Android apps get a big refreshhttp://venturebeat.com/2012/11/08/pulse-news-ios-android-apps-get-a-big-refresh/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/08/pulse-news-ios-android-apps-get-a-big-refresh/#commentsThu, 08 Nov 2012 20:32:11 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=571569News aggregation service Pulse debuted version 3.0 of its mobile apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad today, which brings lots of new features and interface tweaks.
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News aggregation service Pulse debuted version 3.0 of its mobile apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad today, which brings lots of new features and interface tweaks.

The service allows you to pull in news sources from hundreds of different web publications and customize how it’s grouped together via category pages. With version 3.0, Pulse now lets you pin an unlimited number of sources/sites to your custom pages, and doesn’t limit how many different pages you can create. That should come in pretty handy for people who want to monitor for ultra specific news from just a handful of sources. For instance, you can now devote a separate page for NFL football, college football, baseball, college basket ball, etc.

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After playing with the iPhone/iPad version for a while, it seems like Pulse 3.0 focuses on making its mobile apps more consistent with the recently launched web app version of the service. Pages are no longer displayed as horizontal tabs along the top of your sources. Instead, you navigate between pages using a sidebar that’s very similar to the web app. The new side bar also makes it much easier for you to reference any saved stories.

Pulse 3.0 also contains a new feature that lets you search for specific news that isn’t easily found within your custom pages. Its new news search tool scans Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Facebook, Google, Flickr, Blekko, and others.